Return to homeSt. Anthony's day.
(Hem., 3/97, p.74) 395 Jan 17,
Emperor Theodosius I (49), the Great, Spanish head of Rome, died.
Theodosius I wrote into his will that upon his death the eastern and
western sections of the empire should be declared separate empires.
His death in this year marks the split of the Roman and Byzantine
Empire.
(ATC, p.24)(MC, 1/17/02)

1504 Jan 17, Pius V, Pope from
1566-1572, was born.
(HN, 1/17/99)

1562 Jan 17, French Protestant
Huguenots were recognized under the Edict of St. Germain.
(AP, 1/17/98)

1601 Jan 17, The Treaty of
Lyons ended a short war between France and Savoy. Savoy was ceded to
France in 1860.
(WUD, 1994, p.1272)(HN, 1/17/99)

1705 Jan 17, John Ray (b.1627),
British naturalist and theologian, died. He had spent three years
traveling in Europe collecting material for his book “Historia
Plantarum." The classification in his 1682 book “Methodus Plantarum
Nova" is based on overall morphology. Ray's plant classification
system was the first to divide flowering plants into monocots and
dicots.
(www.1911encyclopedia.org/John_Ray)(WSJ, 5/10/08,
p.W8)

1706 Jan 17, Benjamin Franklin
(d.1790), American statesman, was born in Boston, the youngest boy
in a family of 17 children. He helped draft the Declaration of
Independence and wrote "Poor Richard’s Almanac." Carl Van Doren
portrays Franklin as a harmonious rationalist in his classic
biography. David Morgan writes of Franklin’s darker side in: “The
Devious Dr. Franklin, Colonial Agent." And Robert Middlekauff
describes Franklin as a trickster in his: “Benjamin Franklin and his
Enemies." Franklin believed in white superiority and said: “why
increase the Sons of Africa by planting them in America, when we
have so fair an opportunity, by excluding all the Blacks and
Tawneys, of increasing the lovely white.?" "If you would not be
forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things
worth reading, or do things worth the writing."
(WSJ, 8/8/95, p. A12)(SFC,12/897, p.A27)(AP,
1/17/98)(AP, 4/17/98)(HN, 1/17/99)(HNQ, 11/19/01)

1732 Jan 17, Stanislaw II
August Poniatowski, last king of Poland (1764-95), was born.
(MC, 1/17/02)

1746 Jan 17, Charles Edward
Stuart, the young pretender, defeated the government forces at the
battle of Falkirk in Scotland.
(HN, 1/17/99)

1806 Jan 17, James Madison
Randolph, Thomas Jefferson's grandson, was the 1st to be born in
White House. His mother was Martha Randolph one of President Thomas
Jefferson's two daughters, this was her 8th child.
(AP, 1/17/06)

1852 Jan 17, At the Sand River
Convention, the British recognized the independence of the Transvaal
Board.
(HN, 1/17/99)

1860 Jan 17, Anton Chekhov
(d.1904), Russian playwright and short story writer, was born. He
was famous for "The Seagull" and "Three Sisters. " Part of his
letters were published in a 1955 edition edited by Lillian Hellman.
In 1997 his later letters from 1899 to actress Olga Knipper were
edited by Jean Benedetti and published as: “Dear Writer, Dear
Actress: The Love Letters of Anton Chekhov and Olga Knipper."
(WUD, 1994, p.252)(WSJ, 12/5/97, p.A16)(HN,
1/17/99)

1861 Jan 17, Lola Montez
(b.1821), dancer and actress, died in NYC. Born in Ireland as Eliza
Rosanna Gilbert she became famous as a "Spanish dancer," courtesan,
and mistress of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, who made her Countess of
Landsfeld.
(SFC, 5/31/14, p.D1)

1863 Jan 17, David Lloyd George
(d.1945), British Prime Minister, was born. First Earl Lloyd-George
of Dwyfor, English statesman: “It is always too late, or too little,
or both. And that is the road to disaster."
(AP, 8/13/97)(HN, 1/17/99)

1865 Jan 17, The 170-foot
sailing ship Sir John Franklin, a clipper out of Baltimore with 16
people aboard, wrecked near Pescadero, Ca. Capt. Desperaux and 11
crew members were lost.
(SFC, 8/10/02, p.A13)(Ind, 8/10/02, 5A)

1871 Jan 17, The 1st cable car
patented by Andrew S. Hallidie. It began service in 1873.
(MC, 1/17/02)

1893 Jan 17, Hawaii's monarchy
was overthrown by a group of businessmen and sugar planters under
Sanford Ballard Dole, who forced Queen Lili’uokalani to abdicate and
formed the Republic of Hawaii. This coup occurred with the knowledge
of John L. Stevens, the US Minister to Hawaii. 300 Marines from the
USS Boston were called to Hawaii, allegedly to protect American
lives. Queen Lili’uokalani wrote to Pres. Harrison for support.
(AP, 1/17/98)(HNPD, 1/25/99)(SFEC, 8/29/99,
p.T11)(ON, 11/02, p.6)
1893 Jan 17, A state record
temperature of 17F, -27C, was recorded in Millsboro, Delaware.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1893 Jan 17, The 19th president
of the United States, Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881), died in
Fremont, Ohio, at age 70.
(AP, 1/17/98)

1899 Jan 17, Notorious gangster
Al Capone was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. The U.S. mobster known as
“Scarface Al" later ran most of Chicago and the surrounding area.
(AP, 1/17/99)(HN, 1/17/99)
1899 Jan 17, US took possession
of Wake Island in Pacific.
(MC, 1/17/02)

1909 Jan 17, Wilbur and Orville
Wright opened the world’s first flying school at Pau, France, and
refused to accept women as students.
(ON, 4/10, p.11)

1911 Jan 17, Francis Galton
(b.1822), English scientist, died. He was one of the first moderns
to present a carefully considered eugenics program. His work
included the invention of weather maps and the description of
fingerprints. He also developed a system for classifying human
profiles using geometric diagrams. He was a cousin of Charles Darwin
and the founder of the science of statistics. The idea of
sterilizing human beings considered as physical or mental
undesirables stemmed from Galton’s ideas.
(NH, 6/97, p.18)(SFC, 8/28/97,
p.A12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton)

1917 Jan 17, The United States
paid Denmark $25 million for the Virgin Islands.
(AP, 1/17/07)

1919 Jan 17, Pianist and
statesman Ignace Jan Paderewski became the first premier of the
newly created republic of Poland.
(AP, 1/17/07)

1929 Jan 17, The first Popeye
character appeared in the Thimble Theater cartoon strip by Elzie
Segar (1894-1938) of Chesater, Ill.
(WSJ, 10/15/96,
p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.C._Segar)
1929 Jan 17, In Afghanistan
Habibullah Kalakani (1891-1929), popularly known as "Bache Saqaw,"
became emir after deposing Amanullah Khan, the grandson of
Rahman Khan, with the help of various Afghan tribes who
opposed modernization. Khan had built 5-mile (8-km) track with steam
locomotives running between Kabul and his European-style palace of
Darulaman. But his plans for a wider network met with opposition.
The line fell into disrepair after he was overthrown.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habibull%C4%81h_Kalak%C4%81ni)(AP,
3/10/12)

1945 Jan 17, Soviet and Polish
forces liberated Warsaw during World War II.
(AP, 1/17/98)(HN, 1/17/99)
1945 Jan 17, Swedish diplomat
Raoul Wallenberg, credited with saving tens of thousands of Jews,
disappeared in Hungary while in Soviet custody. Raoul Wallenberg was
jailed by the Soviets who believed that he was an American spy. He
had saved more than 20,000 Hungarian Jews from Nazi death camps.
Wallenberg was a graduate of the Univ. of Michigan and studied there
from 1931-1935. In 2000 a Kremlin commission believed that he was
shot in a KGB prison.
(SFC, 5/5/96, p.A-7)(AP, 1/17/98)(MT, Spg. ‘99,
p.18)(SFC, 11/28/00, p.A18)

1946 Jan 17, The United Nations
Security Council held its first meeting.
(AP, 1/17/98)

1950 Jan 17, In Boston 11 men
robbed the Brink's office of $1.2M cash & $1.5M securities. The
1978 film "The Brink’s Job" starred Peter Falk and Peter Boyle. It
was based on the nonfiction book "The Big Stick-Up at Brink’s" by
Noel Behn.
(SFC, 8/1/98,
p.A19)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Brinks_Robbery)

1951 Jan 17, China refused a
cease-fire in Korea.
(MC, 1/17/02)

1953 Jan 17, GM introduced the
first American sports car, the two-seater Corvette at the annual NYC
Motorama Show at the Waldorf-Astoria. It was not made available for
sale to the public until June 30th.
(http://tinyurl.com/fdjur)(http://auto.howstuffworks.com/1953-corvette.htm)
1953 Jan 17, In Egypt all
political parties were dissolved and banned. The ban continued to
1976.
(http://countrystudies.us/egypt/32.htm)(Econ,
12/17/11, p.86)

1961 Jan 17, In his farewell
address, President Eisenhower warned against the rise of "the
military-industrial complex."
(AP, 1/17/98)
1961 Jan 17, US Pres. Dwight
Eisenhower and Canada’s PM John Diefenbaker signed a treaty to
jointly control the Columbia River. The treaty was implemented in
1964.
(Econ, 5/31/14,
p.42)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_River_Treaty)
1961 Jan 17, Patrice Lumumba
(34), the 1st premier Congo, was murdered after 67 days in office.
Pres. Eisenhower allegedly approved the assassination of Congo's
Patrice Lumumba. The US and Joseph Mobutu were implicated but no
conclusive proof has emerged. Sidney Gottlieb (d.1999 at 80), a CIA
deputy, carried a deadly bacteria to the Congo that was used to kill
Lamumba. In 2000 the Belgium Parliament opened an inquiry into
possible government involvement in the killing of Congo’s Premier
Patrice Lumumba. This followed allegations in the new book "The
Murder of Lumumba" by Ludo De Witte. In 2001 the inquiry found that
King Baudouin knew of the plot but did nothing to stop it. The
Katanga government did not announce the death until Feb 13. Moscow
charged that UN Sec. Gen. Dag Hammarskjold was involved.
(TMC, 1994, p.1961)(PCh, 1992, p.979)(SFC,
5/17/97, p.A14)(SFC, 5/3/00, p.A14)(WSJ, 11/9/01, p.A1)

1964 Jan 17, The PLO charter
was put together with articles that proclaimed Israel an illegal
state and pledged "the elimination of Zionism in Palestine." The PLO
was founded in Egypt. Fatah became the core group of the PLO.
(SFC, 12/11/98, p.A18)(SFC, 4/30/02, p.A8)(SFC,
11/11/04, p.18)

1966 Jan 17, Martin Luther King
Jr. opened a campaign in Chicago.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1966 Jan 17, A US Air Force
B-52 carrying four unarmed hydrogen bombs crashed on the Spanish
coast. Three of the bombs were quickly recovered, but the fourth
wasn't found until April. Two US Air Force jets collided in the
skies over Spanish coastal village of Palomares. The mid-air crash
of the B-52 bomber and a KC-135 refueling plane killed 8 crew
members.
(AP,
1/17/06)(www.commondreams.org/views01/0803-08.htm)

1967 Jan 17, Barney Ross
(1909), Jewish boxer born as Dov-Ber Rasofsky, died. He won
the lightweight title in 1933 and the welterweight crown in 1934. In
2006 Douglas Century authored the biography “Barney Ross."
(www.ibhof.com/ross.htm)(WSJ, 3/17/06, p.W7)
1967 Jan 17, Evelyn Nesbit
(b.1884), American artists' model and chorus girl, died in Santa
Monica, Ca. She is noted for her entanglement in the 1906 murder of
her ex-lover, architect Stanford White, by her first husband, Harry
Kendall Thaw.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Nesbit)

1970 Jan 17, In Vietnam Donald
Sloat was killed in action as he used his body to cover a hand
grenade saving three fellow soldiers. In 2014 Sloat was awarded the
Medal of Honor.
(http://tinyurl.com/pc7364y)(SFC, 9/16/14, p.A7)

1973 Jan 17, The US Public
Health Service linked smoking to fetal and infant risks.
(HN, 1/17/99)

1977 Jan 17, The TV sitcom
“Busting Loose" began with Adam Arkin and ran for 24 episodes.
(SFC, 2/13/08,
p.B7)(www.imdb.com/title/tt0192884/)
1977 Jan 17, Gary Gilmore
(b.1940), convicted for two murders he committed in Utah, was shot
by a firing squad at Utah State Prison in the first US execution in
a decade. In 1979 Norman Mailer authored his Pulitzer Prize winning
book: “The Executioner’s Song," the story of Gary Gilmore.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Gilmore)(AP,
1/17/98)(Econ, 11/17/07, p.103)
1977 Jan 17, In Argentina Abel
Madariaga last saw his wife, a surgeon who treated the poor in a
Buenos Aires suburb, being pushed into a Ford Falcon by army
officers dressed as civilians as she walked to a train. He and
Silvia Quintela (28) were members of the Montoneros, a leftist group
targeted for elimination by government death squads. Quintela gave
birth to a son the couple had planned to name Francisco in July
1977, while imprisoned in the Campo de Mayo, one of the notorious
clandestine torture centers in suburban Buenos Aires. A military
intelligence officer, Victor Alejandro Gallo, brought the baby, his
umbilical cord still attached, home to his wife, Ines Susana
Colombo. Silvia disappeared shortly thereafter. In 2010 Abel was
reunited with his son and Gallo was arrested on suspicion of illegal
adoption.
(AP, 2/24/10)

1970 Jan 17, Silas Trim Bissell
(d.2002) and his wife Judith, Weathermen underground members, set a
homemade bomb under the steps of the ROTC building at Washington
State Univ. It failed to go off and both were caught. Bissel went
underground but was caught and served 17 months in Lompoc
(1987-1988).
(SFC, 6/24/02, p.B6)

1982 Jan 17, In the SF Bay Area
Elisabeth Martinsson (21), a Swedish exchange student at the College
of Marin, disappeared. Ten days later a convicted rapist was found
with the car in Oklahoma. Henry Coleman (31) of Los Angeles, was
wanted on a robbery warrant out of California. He was convicted of
auto theft and sentenced to five years in prison, but was never
charged with Martinsson's death. In 2014 dental records were used to
identify her remains found in a canyon in Fremont, Ca.
(AP, 5/26/15)
1982 Jan 17, Varlan Shalamov,
Russian writer, journalist, poet and Gulag survivor, died in Moscow.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varlam_Shalamov)

1984 Jan 17, The US Supreme
Court sided with Sony and ruled, 5 to 4, that the private use of
home video cassette recorders to tape television programs did not
violate federal copyright laws.
(AP, 1/17/02)(SFC, 4/8/02, p.E1)

1985 Jan 17, A jury in New
Jersey ruled that terminally ill patients have the right to starve
themselves.
(HN, 1/17/99)

1986 Jan 17, President Reagan
approved a finding that authorized the sale of weapons to Iran
through third parties.
(www.thedubyareport.com/family.html)

1987 Jan 17, A Reagan
Administration official who initiated the arms shipments to Iran,
acknowledged that the US had virtually no independent intelligence
to support its policy.
(http://tinyurl.com/py89w)
1987 Jan 17, Hans Fricke on an
undersea expedition off the east coast of Africa at a 180 meters
from Grande Comore’s west coast found and filmed a coelacanth fish
at a depth of 198 meters.
(NG, 6/1988, p.827)

1988 Jan 17, The Washington
Redskins won the NFC championship by defeating the Minnesota Vikings
17-10; the Denver Broncos beat the Cleveland Browns 38-33 to win the
AFC title.
(AP, 1/17/98)
1988 Jan 17, Haiti held a
presidential election run by the military-led junta that was
boycotted by the opposition.
(AP, 1/17/98)
1988 Jan 17, Angelo de Mojana
di Cologna, the Grand Master of The Order of St. John (Knights of
Malta), died. Fidel Castro declared a national day of mourning in
Cuba.
(WSJ, 12/30/94,
p.A6)(www.worldstatesmen.org/Malta_knights.htm)

1989 Jan 17, Five children were
shot to death at the Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton,
Calif., by a drifter who then killed himself. Patrick Henry Purdy
(27), an alcoholic with a gun fetish, had gone to school there.
(AP, 1/17/99)(SFC, 10/4/06, p.A1)

1990 Jan 17, A federal judge in
Miami set March 1990 for the trial of ex-Panamanian leader Manuel
Noriega on drug trafficking charges. After initial delays, Noriega
was tried and convicted of racketeering and conspiracy to distribute
cocaine, and was sentenced to 40 years in prison, later cut to 30
years.
(AP, 1/17/00)

1991 Jan 17, The Persian Gulf
War began as Coalition planes struck targets in Iraq and Kuwait. The
first Iraqi Scud missile attacks on Israel were launched. There were
reports of death and injury, and possibly even chemical weapons
being used. For a few tense hours, it looked as though Israel would
retaliate against Iraq, causing the allied coalition to break up.
Six months of preparation and diplomacy might be undone by a few
poorly aimed, 1950s-vintage ballistic missiles. Later that evening,
U.S. Patriot surface-to-air missiles were launched against the
incoming Scuds, and for the first time in history, a ballistic
missile was shot down by another missile. The use of Patriot
missiles in Israel’s defense helped to keep that country out of the
Gulf War, thereby safeguarding the integrity of the
American-European-Arab coalition. Jeffrey Zahn became the 1st US
pilot shot down. Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher (33) was shot down
over western Iraq. In 1993 the ruins of his plane were found. In
2009 his remains were found and positively identified.
(SFC, 9/4/96, p.A8)(SFEC,12/797, p.A1,16)(HN,
1/17/99)(AP, 8/2/09)
1991 Jan 17, On the first day
of Operation Desert Storm, US-led forces hammered Iraqi targets in
an effort to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. A defiant Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein declared that the “mother of all battles" had begun.
Iraq attacked Israel with ten Scud missiles. The US Patriot defense
missile was used in battle for the first time to shoot down a Scud
fired at Saudi Arabia.
(AP, 1/17/01)
1991 Jan 17, Crude oil futures
fell $10.56 following the release of strategic US crude oil
stockpiles coinciding with the start of the Persian Gulf War.
(WSJ, 8/23/08, p.B6)

1992 Jan 17, President Bush
laid a wreath at the crypt of Martin Luther King Jr. in Atlanta.
(AP, 1/17/02)
1992 Jan 17, IBM announced a
nearly $5B loss for 1991.
(www.iht.com/articles/1992/01/17/ibm_.php)
1992 Jan 17, Celeste Carrington
(30), a former janitor of from East Palo Alto, Ca., shot and killed
Victor Esparza (34) in San Carlos during a robbery. 2 months later
she shot and killed Caroline Gleason (36), a property manager,
during a robbery in Palo Alto. 5 days later she wounded a 3rd person
in an attempted robbery. She was later convicted and sentenced to
death. In 2009 the California Supreme court upheld her death
sentence.
(SFC, 7/28/09,
p.C2)(www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/S043628.PDF)
1992 Jan 17, Eight Protestant
laborers were killed in an IRA bombing in Northern Ireland.
(AP, 1/17/02)

1993 Jan 17, The United States,
accusing Iraq of a series of military provocations, unleashed
Tomahawk missiles against a military complex eight miles from
downtown Baghdad. President-elect Clinton, arriving in Washington
for his inauguration, backed the action.
(AP, 1/17/98)
1993 Jan 17, Albert Hourani
(b.1915), British academic of Lebanese origin, died. His books
included “A History of the Arab Peoples" (1991).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Hourani)

1997 Jan 17, The US House
ethics committee approved a $300,000 penalty against Speaker Newt
Gingrich for ethics violations. Speaker Newt Gingrich agreed to
submit to the reprimand
(SFC, 1/18/97, p.A1) (AP, 1/17/98)
1997 Jan 17, A $40 million
navigation satellite for the US Air Force blew up on takeoff at Cape
Canaveral.
(SFC, 1/18/97, p.A3)
1997 Jan 17, Clyde William
Tombaugh, the astronomer who discovered Pluto in 1930, died in New
Mexico.
(SFEC, 1/19/97, p.B6)
1997 Jan 17, In Columbia Cali
cartel bosses Gilberto and Miguel Rodriguez drew prison terms of
10.5 and 9 years for cocaine trafficking.
(SFC, 1/18/97, p.C1)
1997 Jan 17, A French medical
team removed 10 bullets from Uday Hussein, son of Saddam Hussein of
Iraq. One bullet was still left lodged in his spine.
(SFC, 1/20/97, p.A13)
1997 Jan 17, A court in Ireland
granted the first divorce in the Roman Catholic country's history.
(AP, 1/17/98)
1997 Jan 17, Israel handed over
its military headquarters in Hebron to the Palestinians, ending 30
years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank city.
(AP, 1/17/98)
1997 Jan 17, Korean workers
announced a reduction in work stoppages. All out strikes were to be
scaled back to once a week.
(SFC, 1/18/97, p.A10)

1998 Jan 17, Pres. Clinton was
interrogated in his deposition In the Paula Jones case. It was the
first time a sitting president was interrogated in a court case.
During the nearly six hours of sworn testimony, Clinton denied that
he had engaged in a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
(SFEC, 1/18/98, p.A1)(SFC, 9/12/98, p.A12)(AP,
1/17/99)
1998 Jan 17, Matt Drudge
reported over the Internet that Monica Lewinsky had paid numerous
service calls to the White House.
(WSJ, 10/24/00, p.A22)
1998 Jan 17, It was reported
that the US military had begun to clear away over 50,000 land mines
around Guantanamo Naval base. The base was defended by 400 marines.
(SFC, 1/17/98, p.A10)
1998 Jan 17, It was reported
that motorists in Cairo were switching to compressed natural gas
(CNG) to fuel their vehicles. It was both cheaper and burned
cleaner. Over 5,000 vehicles had made the switch.
(SFC, 1/17/98, p.A10)
1998 Jan 17, In Iraq Sadam
Hussein threatened to expel all UN arms inspectors in 6 months if
the country is not cleared of suspicions about weapons programs and
if sanctions are not lifted.
(SFEC, 1/18/98, p.A1)
1998 Jan 17, In South Korea
some 2,500 workers marched in Seoul to protest the government’s
labor reform plan. Kim Dae-jung called for a smaller labor force to
attract more funds from the IMF and foreign investors.
(SFEC, 1/18/98, p.A14)

1999 Jan 17, The defending
Super Bowl champion Denver Broncos defeated the New York Jets,
23-10, to win the American Football Conference title; the Atlanta
Falcons upset the Minnesota Vikings, 30-27, to win the National
Football Conference championship.
(AP, 1/17/04)
1999 Jan 17, As White House
lawyers met to work on President Clinton's impeachment defense,
their client spent the day preparing for his State of the Union
address.
(AP, 1/17/00)
1999 Jan 17, In Bryan, Ohio, 3
freight trains crashed into each other and 2 crew members were
killed.
(SFC, 1/18/99, p.A5)
1999 Jan 17, In Tennessee
tornadoes left 9 people dead and 100 injured with extensive damage
in 28 counties.
(SFC, 1/18/99, p.A5)(WSJ, 1/19/99, p.A1)
1999 Jan 17, US talks with
North Korea over inspection of an underground nuclear site were
adjourned. North Korea demanded $300 million in compensation to
inspect the Kumchangni site.
(SFC, 1/18/99, p.A14)
1999 Jan 17, In Chile a forest
fire had destroyed 24,000 acres near San Fernando, some 80 miles
south of Santiago. It was the worst fire in 25 years.
(SFC, 1/18/99, p.A17)
1999 Jan 17, In Pakistan
Islamic laws were imposed in tribal areas of the northwest with
punishments to include lashings, amputations of hands and feet, and
executions.
(SFC, 1/18/99, p.A14)
1999 Jan 17, In Turkey the
parliament voted in a new minority government under Prime Minister
Bulent Ecevit.
(WSJ, 1/18/99, p.A15)
1999 Jan 17, In Yemen 2 British
and 4 Dutch citizens were kidnapped.
(SFC, 1/18/99, p.A10)

2000 Jan 17, The Clinton
administration announced that talks between Israel and Syria had
been postponed indefinitely.
(SFC, 1/18/00, p.A1)
2000 Jan 17, In Columbia, South
Carolina, some 46,000 demonstrators marched on the Statehouse on
Martin Luther King Day decrying the Confederate flag as a symbol of
slavery and racism and called for the removal on the flag.
(SFC, 1/18/00, p.A1)(AP, 1/17/01)
2000 Jan 17, British
pharmaceutical firms Glaxo Wellcome PLC and SmithKline Beecham PLC
announced a merger to form the world’s largest drug maker valued at
$186 billion.
(SFC, 1/17/00, p.A1)(AP,
1/17/01)
2000 Jan 17, In Chechnya
Russian aircraft and artillery bombed Grozny with a record number of
attacks.
(SFC, 1/18/00, p.A8)
2000 Jan 17, A boat carrying 40
migrants trying to illegally reach Puerto Rico sank off the
Dominican coast after leaving Sabana de la Mar and at least 8 people
were killed.
(SFC, 1/18/00, p.A12)
2000 Jan 17, In Ecuador police
broke up a march by oil workers in Quito as some 30,000 troops were
deployed in fears of unrest.
(WSJ, 1/18/00, p.A1)
2000 Jan 17, In Indonesia angry
Muslims burned as many as a dozen churches at Mataram and Ampenan on
Lombok Island.
(SFC, 1/18/00, p.A12)
2000 Jan 17, Huseyin Velioglu,
founder and leader of Turkish Hezbollah, was killed in a shootout
with Turkish Police during a raid in the Istanbul suburb of Beykoz.
(www.tkb.org/KeyLeader.jsp?memID=5922)

2001 Jan 17, Pres. Clinton
created 6 new national monuments that included: The Carrizo Plain,
204,107 acres between San Luis Obispo and Bakersfield in California;
the 377,346 acres Upper Missouri River Breaks and the 51 acres
Pompeys Pillar landmark in Montana; the 486,149 acre Sonoran Desert
monument in Arizona; the 63 acre Minidoka Internment National
Monument in Idaho; and the 4,148 acre Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks in New
Mexico.
(SFC, 1/17/01, p.A2)
2001 Jan 17, California used
rolling blackouts to cut off power to hundreds of thousands of
people. Gov. Davis declared a state of emergency and ordered the
Dept. of Water Resources to buy and sell electricity to help
alleviate the crises. PG&E defaulted on $76 million in short
term debt.
(SFC, 1/18/01, p.A1)(AP, 1/17/02)
2001 Jan 17, Gregory Corso
(70), Beat poet, died in Robbinsdale, Minn. His poetry collections
included “Gasoline" and “Mindfield" (1989).
(SFC, 1/19/01, p.D7)
2001 Jan 17, In Britain the
House of Commons voted 387 to 174 to ban fox hunting.
(SFC, 1/18/01, p.A16)
2001 Jan 17, In Colombia 25 men
were hacked to death by some 50 AUC right-wing paramilitary at
Chengue. 30 homes were set on fire and 7 men taken as hostages.
Residents had called for protection 23 months earlier.
(SFC, 1/18/01, p.A14)(SSFC, 1/21/01, p.D3)
2001 Jan 17, In Congo
government ministers named Joseph Kabila, son of Laurent Kabila, as
temporary head of state.
(SFC, 1/18/01, p.A13)
2001 Jan 17, In Indonesia
separatist rebels took 6 hostages in Irian Jaya. The kidnappers
belonged to a faction of the Free Papua Movement led by Willem
Konde.
(SFC, 1/18/01, p.A16)
2001 Jan 17, It was reported
that Norway was lifting its ban on exports of whale meat and
byproducts.
(WSJ, 1/17/01, p.A1)
2001 Jan 17, Hisham Miki (54),
head of Palestinian TV, was shot to death by 3 masked men in Gaza
City.
(SFC, 1/18/01, p.A13)
2001 Jan 17, In Sudan some
30,000 people fled rebel-held regions in the Numa Mountains.
(SFC, 1/18/01, p.A16)

2002 Jan 17, Enron fired
accounting firm Arthur Andersen, citing its destruction of thousands
of documents and its accounting advice; for its part, Andersen said
its relationship with Enron ended in early December 2001 when the
company slid into the biggest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history.
(AP, 1/17/03)
2002 Jan 17, US Sec. of State
Powell visited Afghanistan and pledged that the US would not abandon
the country.
(SFC, 1/18/02, p.A20)(WSJ, 1/18/02, p.A1)
2002 Jan 17, In Arizona 2 A-10
Thunderbolt II attack jets collided and 1 pilot was killed.
(SFC, 1/18/02, p.A4)
2002 Jan 17, In Argentina Roque
Maccarone, president of the Central Bank, resigned in a dispute with
Economic Minister Remes Lenicov over ways to preserved the value of
the peso.
(SFC, 1/18/02, p.A6)
2002 Jan 17, The Congo volcano
Mount Nyiragongo erupted near Goma and rivers of lava destroyed 14
villages. Goma was devastated and some 400,000 people fled their
homes. At least 50 people were killed.
(SFC, 1/18/02, p.A8)(SFC, 1/19/02, p.A1)(SSFC,
1/20/02, p.A16)
2002 Jan 17, An Ecuadoran
oil-company plane crashed in Colombia and all 26 aboard were feared
dead. The plane was found Jan 24 with no survivors.
(WSJ, 1/21/02, p.A1)(SFC, 1/25/02, p.A15)
2002 Jan 17, In Leicester,
England, police arrested 2 Algerian men allegedly involved in a plot
to bomb the US Embassy in Paris. Another 8 men were arrested north
of London under the Terrorism Act.
(SFC, 1/18/02, p.A16)
2002 Jan 17, In Hadera, Israel,
a Palestinian gunmen opened fire at a bat mitzvah party and killed 6
people before he was beaten and killed. 30 more were wounded.
(SFC, 1/18/02, p.A1)
2002 Jan 17, In Nigeria labor
leaders ended a 2-day general strike after Adams Oshiomole and other
activists of the Labor Congress were arrested.
(SFC, 1/18/02, p.A8)
2002 Jan 17, In Peru some 200
Aguaruna Indians attacked settlers near the Ecuador border and
killed 14 people. Landless peasants had begun settling the area in
1989.
(SFC, 1/19/02, p.A4)
2002 Jan 17, Camilo Jose Cela
(85), Spanish novelist and 1989 Noble Prize winner, died in Madrid.
(WSJ, 1/18/02, p.A1)

2003 Jan 17, Tom Ridge sailed
through Senate confirmation hearings on his way to becoming the
nation's first Homeland Security Department chief.
(AP, 1/17/04)
2003 Jan 17, Constellation
Brands of Fairport, NY, announced a $1.4 billion acquisition of
Australia's BRL Hardy. The combination would form the world's
largest wine company.
(SFC, 1/18/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 17, Richard Crenna
(75), radio, film and TV actor, died.
(SFC, 1/20/03, p.B4)
2003 Jan 17, Margo Patterson
Doss (b.1920), former SF Chronicle columnist, died. In 1961 she
began writing her Sunday column “San Francisco at Your Feet" and
continued for 30 years. During the last decade of her life she
gardened in Bolinas and wrote for the Point Reyes Light.
(SFC, 1/22/09, p.B1)
2003 Jan 17, Gertrude Janeway
(93), the last known widow of a Union veteran from the Civil War,
died in Blaine, Tenn. She had married John Janeway in 1927 when he
was 81 and she was barely 18.
(AP, 1/17/08)
2003 Jan 17, A bomb ripped
through a village in northern Bangladesh during an annual carnival,
killing six people and wounding six others.
(AP, 1/18/03)
2003 Jan 17, Parliament of the
Bosnian Serb ministate approved a Cabinet and Dragan Mikerevic (48)
as the new prime minister.
(AP, 1/17/03)
2003 Jan 17, France and Spain
opened the new 5.3-mile Somport tunnel through the western Pyrenees
mountains.
(AP, 1/18/03)
2003 Jan 17, On the 12th
anniversary of the Gulf War, a defiant Saddam Hussein called on his
people to rise up and defend the nation against a new U.S.-led
attack.
(AP, 1/17/04)
2003 Jan 17, Iraq and Russia
signed three oil agreements for exploration and development of oil
fields in southern and western Iraq.
(AP, 1/17/03)
2003 Jan 17, In Kenya informer
William Mwaura Munuhe (27) was found dead at his home in the
affluent Nairobi suburb of Karen, two days after the U.S. Embassy
and Kenyan police tried to trap genocide suspect Felicien Kabuga.
(AP, 1/21/03)
2003 Jan 17, Massive flooding
caused by Cyclone Delfina ravaged parts of Malawi and Mozambique,
washing away homes and crops, submerging roads and bridges, and
cutting off electricity in the impoverished nations.
(AP, 1/17/03)
2003 Jan 17, Two Palestinian
gunmen infiltrated the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, killing an
Israeli man as he opened the door of his home and wounding three
other people. One gunman was shot and killed in the attack.
(AP, 1/17/03)
2003 Jan 17, Poland Prime
Minister Leszek Miller fired his health minister and 2 deputy
finance ministers resigned in the 2nd Cabinet reshuffle this month.
(AP, 1/17/03)
2003 Jan 17, Russian
prosecutors presented a criminal dossier on feared Soviet secret
police chief Lavrenty Beria, including a list of hundreds of women
he had allegedly stalked and raped.
(AP, 1/17/03)
2003 Jan 17, The Strategic
Partnership with Africa (SPA), made of 15 developed nations,
international lending institutions and UN agencies, concluded its
annual meeting in Addis Ababa. More than 20 developed nations,
lending institutions and UN agencies agreed to increase aid to
Africa.
(AP, 1/17/03)
2003 Jan 17, Turkish troops
killed 12 Kurdish rebels in the southeast over the past two days.
(AP, 1/17/03)

2004 Jan 17, Ray Stark (88),
Hollywood producer, died. His films included "Funny Girl," based on
the life of Broadway singer Fanny Brice, his mother-in-law.
(SSFC, 1/18/04, p.A14)
2004 Jan 17, A U.S. helicopter
attacked a house in Saghatho village in southern Afghanistan,
killing 11 people, four of them children. The US military said that
only 5 militants were killed. President Hamid Karzai later said 10
Afghan civilians were killed in the US strike.
(AP, 1/19/04)(SFC, 1/20/04, p.A3)(AP, 1/31/04)
2004 Jan 17, In Brazil the
death toll rose to 11 as heavy rains and mudslides pounded the
Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro for the second day in a row.
(AP, 1/17/04)
2004 Jan 17, A Cessna 208
regional plane carrying hunters went down in Lake Erie about one
mile west of Pelee Island, Canada. All 9 aboard were killed.
(AP, 1/18/04)(WSJ, 1/19/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 17, The Chinese
government confirmed two more SARS patients, bringing the total
number this year to three.
(AP, 1/17/04)
2004 Jan 17, A roadside bomb
exploded near Baghdad, killing three U.S. soldiers and two Iraqi
civil defense troopers. The number of American service members who
have died since the Iraq war began reached 500.
(AP, 1/17/04)
2004 Jan 17, An explosive
device being transported in a car exploded near a U.S. Army patrol
in Tikrit, killing two men in the vehicle, one of them a relative of
Saddam Hussein.
(AP, 1/18/04)
2004 Jan 17, In Guatemala Nobel
Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu said she will become one of new
President Oscar Berger's top officials in charge of monitoring
adherence to the U.N.-brokered peace accords that ended 36 years of
civil war.
(AP, 1/18/04)
2004 Jan 17, Indian soldiers
and Islamic rebels clashed in disputed Kashmir in two separate
gunbattles that killed eight guerrillas and two paramilitary
soldiers.
(AP, 1/17/04)
2004 Jan 17, In Lebanon 3
killers were executed and grenade blasts followed in Beirut's
largest Palestinian refugee camp.
(WSJ, 1/19/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 17, Myanmar's junta
said it freed 26 members of Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition National
League for Democracy party.
(AP, 1/17/04)
2004 Jan 17, Rafael Cordero
Santiago (61), the mayor of the Puerto Rican city of Ponce, died
after suffering a brain hemorrhage.
(AP, 1/17/04)

2005 Jan 17, SF and other US
cities held parades honoring Martin Luther King.
(SFC, 1/18/05, p.A1)
2005 Jan 17, Virginia Mayo
(b.1920), film actress, died in LA. Her over 40 films included
“White Heat" (1933) and “Best years of Our Lives" (1946).
(SFC, 1/18/05, p.B4)
2005 Jan 17, British Treasury
chief Gordon Brown called on wealthy nations and international
institutions to write off Africa's debt, saying debts incurred by
past generations are keeping the continent poor.
(AP, 1/17/05)
2005 Jan 17, Chinese news
reports said authorities have arrested dozens of government
officials and others accused in a scheme to steal 7.4 billion yuan
($900 million) from a state bank through fraudulent loans.
(AP, 1/17/05)
2005 Jan 17, Zhao Ziyang (85),
former Chinese leader (1980-1987), died after 15 years under house
arrest. He was ousted as China's Communist Party leader after
sympathizing with the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests.
In 2009 a secret recording of his insights regarding the 1989
protests were translated edited and published by Bao Pu: “Prisoner
of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang."
(AP, 1/17/05)(SFC, 1/17/05, p.B4)(Econ, 1/22/05,
p.82)(Econ, 5/23/09, p.88)
2005 Jan 17, Iranian President
Mohammed Khatami arrived in Zimbabwe to a red carpet welcome from
his counterpart Robert Mugabe with whom he is due to hold talks over
two days.
(AP, 1/18/05)
2005 Jan 17, Iraqi expatriates
in 14 countries began registering to vote in Iraq's Jan. 30
elections.
(AP, 1/17/06)
2005 Jan 17, Gunmen killed 8
Iraqi National Guardsmen at a checkpoint northeast of Baghdad, and 8
people died in a suicide car bombing at a police station outside the
capital. Two Iraqi government auditors were shot to death after
armed gunmen stopped their car in an area southeast of Baghdad. In
Ramadi, officials found four bodies, three civilians and one Iraqi
soldier. They bore handwritten signs declaring them collaborators.
(AP, 1/17/05)
2005 Jan 17, Israeli warplanes
attacked suspected Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon after the
guerrillas said they blew up an Israeli bulldozer in a disputed area
near the border, reportedly causing casualties.
(AP, 1/17/05)
2005 Jan 17, Palestinian leader
Mahmoud Abbas ordered his security forces to try to prevent attacks
against Israel and to investigate a shooting at a Gaza Strip
crossing that killed six Israeli civilians last week.
(AP, 1/17/05)
2005 Jan 17, Russian police
stopped angry retirees from blocking traffic, the third day of
protests in President Vladimir Putin's hometown against welfare
benefit cutoffs.
(AP, 1/17/05)
2005 Jan 17, In Thailand a
collision on Bangkok’s new subway injured 200 and suspended service
for a week. A crew error was blamed.
(WSJ, 1/18/05, p.A1)
2005 Jan 17, Singapore said its
exports expanded by 17 percent to a record high in 2004, reflecting
strong demand from China for oil and commodities and solid sales of
electronics and pharmaceuticals to the United States and European
Union.
(AP, 1/17/05)

2006 Jan 17, The US rejected a
Philippine request to hand over 4 Marines to be tried for rape,
setting off anti-American protests in Manila and elsewhere.
(WSJ, 1/18/06, p.A1)
2006 Jan 17, Civil liberties
groups filed lawsuits in NYC and Detroit seeking to block President
Bush's domestic eavesdropping program, arguing the electronic
surveillance of American citizens was unconstitutional.
(AP, 1/17/06)
2006 Jan 17, The US Supreme
Court told the Justice Department to butt out of the private
decisions of terminally ill patients in Oregon, the only state that
specifically allows physician-assisted suicide. The court ruled 6-3
ruling that Congress hadn't given the Justice Department authority
to take such action.
(AP, 1/18/06)
2006 Jan 17, The US SEC voted
on proposals for a massive revamp on how companies disclose
executive pay.
(WSJ, 1/17/06, p.C1)
2006 Jan 17, California
executed Clarence Ray Allen, its oldest death row inmate, minutes
after his 76th birthday, despite arguments that putting to death an
elderly, blind and wheelchair-bound man was cruel and unusual
punishment. He was sentenced to death in 1982 for hiring a hit man
who killed a witness and two bystanders.
(AP, 1/17/06)
2006 Jan 17, Austria said it
will honor an arbitration court decision and give five precious
Gustav Klimt paintings to a California woman who says the Nazis
stole them from her Jewish family.
(AP, 1/17/06)
2006 Jan 17, Outgoing President
Eduardo Rodriguez fired Bolivia's army chief over his decision to
have 28 Chinese shoulder-launched missiles destroyed in the US.
(AP, 1/17/06)
2006 Jan 17, Cambodia, under US
pressure, released four prominent government critics from a Phnom
Penh prison but said they will still face defamation charges.
(AP, 1/17/06)
2006 Jan 17, In Ghana first
lady Laura Bush announced a US-backed program to provide 15 million
textbooks for students in sub-Saharan Africa where more than
one-third of primary school aged children are not enrolled in
school.
(AP, 1/17/06)
2006 Jan 17, In Haiti gunmen
killed two Jordanian UN peacekeepers and seriously wounded a third
at a checkpoint in Cite Soleil, a slum in Port-au-Prince.
(AP, 1/17/06)
2006 Jan 17, Subur Sugiarto, an
alleged key aide to a Malaysian fugitive blamed for a series of
deadly terrorist attacks in Indonesia, was captured in the central
Javanese town of Boyolali en route to Jakarta. A local officer
alleged that Sugiarto was "a henchman" of Noordin Top, who is
believed to be a senior member of the al-Qaida-linked Southeast
Asian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah.
(AP, 1/19/06)
2006 Jan 17, Iran lifted its
ban on CNN, a day after the government barred the US network from
the country because of its mistranslation of nuclear comments by
Pres. Ahmadinejad.
(AP, 1/17/06)
2006 Jan 17, In Iraq masked
gunmen killed two people in attacks on an election headquarters and
a Kurdish political party office in the northern city of Kirkuk.
Hostage American reporter Jill Carroll appeared in a silent
20-second video aired by Al-Jazeera television, which said her
abductors had given the United States 72 hours to free female
prisoners in Iraq or she would be killed. Carroll was freed unharmed
on March 30, 2006.
(AP, 1/17/06)(AP, 1/17/07)
2006 Jan 17, Thousands of
pro-Syrian Lebanese chanting "Death to America" protested near the
US Embassy against what they called American meddling in the
country's affairs.
(AP, 1/17/06)
2006 Jan 17, North Korean
leader Kim Jong-il appeared to have left China after meeting Chinese
leaders in Beijing to discuss six-party talks aimed at ending
Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program.
(Reuters, 1/17/06)
2006 Jan 17, Napoleon Ortigoza
(73), a former army captain who spent a third of his life in
Paraguay jail as a political prisoner, died in a hospital. Ortigoza
was imprisoned in 1962 by Alfredo Stroessner's security apparatus on
charges of conspiring to topple the right-wing military strongman.
(AP, 1/19/06)
2006 Jan 17, In the Philippines
4 officers, accused of leading hundreds of troops in a failed 2003
mutiny, escaped from an army prison. The army lieutenants were
identified as Lawrence San Juan, Sonny Sarmiento, Nathaniel Rabonza
and Patricio Bumindang.
(AP, 1/17/06)
2006 Jan 17, Russia's foreign
minister indicated that Moscow was not ready to support moves by the
U.S. and its European allies to refer Iran to the U.N. Security
Council over its nuclear program, while the West stepped up pressure
on Tehran.
(AP, 1/17/06)
2006 Jan 17, In Russia 2 people
died of exposure and 14 more were hospitalized in a single day as
temperatures plunged in Moscow dropping from about freezing to
minus-28 Celsius (minus-18 Fahrenheit) overnight.
(AP, 1/17/06)
2006 Jan 17, Suspected Tiger
rebels set off two more mines and fought a gunbattle with troops
leaving 3 people dead. The United Nations urged talks and
peace-broker Norway made a fresh bid to pull Sri Lanka back from the
brink of war.
(AP, 1/17/06)
2006 Jan 17, Taiwan's PM Frank
Hsieh announced his resignation, paving the way for a Cabinet
reshuffle.
(AP, 1/17/06)

2007 Jan 17, A year after
disclosure of a domestic spying program that President Bush
maintained was within his authority to operate, Attorney General
Alberto Gonzales announced the administration had shifted its
position and would seek the approval of an independent panel of
federal judges.
(AP, 1/17/08)
2007 Jan 17, Alaska’s newly
elected Gov. Sarah Palin (42) delivered her 1st state speech.
(http://community.adn.com/?q=adn/node/104605)
2007 Jan 17, The Doomsday
Clock, created in 1947 and run by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists,
was nudged forward to 11:55 due to moves by Iran and North Korea. It
reached 11:58 in 1953 and moved back to 11:43 in 1991.
(SFC, 1/18/07, p.A10)
2007 Jan 17, In Texas James
Waller, who spent 10 years behind bars for the rape of a boy, became
the 12th person in Dallas County to be cleared by DNA evidence.
(AP, 1/19/07)(http://tinyurl.com/27evec)
2007 Jan 17, A US snow and ice
storm was blamed for at least 64 deaths in nine states. These
included 20 deaths in Oklahoma, 9 in Missouri, 8 in Iowa, 4 in New
York, 5 in Texas, 4 in Michigan, 3 in Arkansas, and 1 each in Maine
and Indiana.
(AP, 1/17/07)(SFC, 1/18/07, p.A3)
2007 Jan 17, The SF Police
Commission approved Mayor Newsom’s request to add surveillance
cameras at 8 additional high-crime locations.
(SFC, 1/18/07, p.B3)
2007 Jan 17, Art Buchwald (81),
columnist and author, died. For over four decades he chronicled the
life and times of Washington DC with an infectious wit and endeared
himself to many with his never-say-die battle with failing kidneys.
(AP, 1/18/07)
2007 Jan 17, In southern
Australia firefighters battled to contain a wildfire that razed a
number of homes amid soaring temperatures and warnings that the
worst was yet to come.
(AP, 1/17/07)
2007 Jan 17, Britain’s Guardian
reported that senior executives at defense manufacturer BAE Systems
have been named as suspects in a corruption inquiry being conducted
by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) into contracts with South Africa.
(AFP, 1/17/07)
2007 Jan 17, Chadian rebels
captured the small town of Ade on the border with Sudan, the latest
in a series of raids in the lawless east of the central African
country.
(AP, 1/17/07)
2007 Jan 17, In southern
Colombia a pickup truck carrying 660 pounds of explosives destroyed
a dairy plant owned by Swiss food giant Nestle SA, an attack police
attributed to leftist rebels.
(AP, 1/18/07)
2007 Jan 17, Conservationists
said rebels in eastern Congo, loyal to warlord Laurent Nkunda, have
killed and eaten two silverback mountain gorillas in Virunga
National Park. Congo’s army said Nkunda agreed two weeks ago to stop
fighting government forces in exchange for a government promise not
to pursue war crimes charges against him.
(AP, 1/18/07)
2007 Jan 17, In Greece
protesters torched cars, broke bank windows and clashed with riot
police during a student demonstration against plans to allow private
universities to operate.
(AP, 1/17/07)
2007 Jan 17, In Honduras a
concrete wall collapsed at a coffee warehouse in Villanueva,
crushing six workers under tons of bagged coffee beans.
(AP, 1/17/07)
2007 Jan 17, In India a bomb
planted in a vegetable carton by suspected members of the United
Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) exploded in a market in Dispur. Two
people, including a child, were killed and 12 people were injured in
the attack.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents,_2007)
2007 Jan 17, A suicide car bomb
struck a market in the Shiite district of Sadr City and police said
17 people died. Another suicide car bomb exploded earlier at a
checkpoint in the city of Kirkuk after guards opened fire as the
driver approached a police station. The blast killed eight people
and injured dozens. A mortar attack on a residential area in
Iskandariyah killed a woman and injured 10 people. Police found the
body of an Iraqi policeman whose hands and legs had been bound
hanging by electric wire, two days after he was kidnapped while
going to his home in the same area. Gunmen in a car also opened fire
on two brothers, aged 30 and 35, on their way to work as
construction workers in Mahaweel, 35 miles south of Baghdad. One was
killed and the other was wounded. In Baghdad, a civilian was killed
in a drive-by shooting and police found 5 unidentified bodies. An
attack in Baghdad on a convoy of a Western democracy institute
killed a 28-year-old Ohio woman and three security contractors.
(AP, 1/17/07)(AP, 1/19/07)
2007 Jan 17, Alice Lakwena, a
Ugandan warrior priestess who led an insurgency in the 1980s, died
at a Kenyan refugee camp. She was known as Alice Auma and claimed to
have been possessed by a spirit called Lakwena, which gave her
spiritual powers to protect her fighters from bullets by anointing
them with oil. Her cousin, Joseph Kony, is the messianic leader of
the Lord's Resistance Army.
(AP, 1/18/07)(Econ, 1/27/07, p.87)
2007 Jan 17, Nepal's former
communist guerrillas began an orderly handover of weapons to UN
monitors, putting in motion a landmark peace deal that calls for
thousands of fighters to disarm and be confined to camps.
(AP, 1/17/07)
2007 Jan 17, In Nigeria rebels
released 5 Chinese telecommunications workers and an Italian oil
worker abducted in the southern delta region. A female (22) in Lagos
died from bird flu. This was Nigeria’s first confirmed fatality from
Avian Influenza. Tests on 3 other deaths were inconclusive.
(AP, 1/18/07)(AFP, 1/31/07)
2007 Jan 17, Russian
prosecutors charged Alexei Frenkel, a bank officer, with organizing
the murder of a senior Central Bank official who sought to clean up
Russia's banking industry. Charges were formally entered against
Frenkel in connection with the killing of Andrei Kozlov, who was
shot at point-blank range on Sept. 13 as he left a soccer game in
Moscow.
(AP, 1/17/07)
2007 Jan 17, Russian lawmakers
sharply criticized Estonia for possible plans to remove a 1947
statue that honors Red Army soldiers who helped drive Nazi forces
from the Baltic nation. Last week the Estonian president signed into
law a bill allowing for the removal of the statue. The monument
upset many in the country that suffered five decades of Soviet
occupation.
(AP, 1/18/07)
2007 Jan 17, A top Somali
lawmaker closely associated with the recently ousted Islamic
movement was voted out as speaker by parliament, a move that could
undermine reconciliation efforts in the restive country.
(AP, 1/17/07)
2007 Jan 17, In Thailand
suspected separatist rebels shot dead two Buddhist villagers in the
Muslim-majority south. The insurgency there has killed more than
1,800 people in three years.
(AFP, 1/17/07)
2007 Jan 17, Yevgeny Kushnaryov
(55), described as "the right-hand man" to Ukraine's pro-Russian PM,
Viktor Yanukovych, died from his wounds one day after being shot by
one of his hunting companions.
(www.alertnet.org/thenews/pictures/MOS11.htm)
2007 Jan 17, Morgan Tsvangirai,
Zimbabwe's main opposition leader, urged mass protests against
President Robert Mugabe's nearly 27-year-rule.
(AFP, 1/17/07)

2008 Jan 17, The White House,
members of Congress and Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke agreed
that strong action is needed to help avoid a US recession. The DJIA
fell over 306 points to 12,159.
(SFC, 1/18/08, p.A1)
2008 Jan 17, The US EPA said
Massey Energy, the country’s 4th largest coal producer, had agreed
to pay a $20 million fine as part of a settlement over allegations
that it routinely polluted hundreds of streams and waterways in West
Virginia and Kentucky.
(SFC, 1/18/08, p.A7)
2008 Jan 17, A US federal judge
struck down Texas laws barring out-of-state retailers from shipping
wine to consumers.
(WSJ, 1/18/08, p.A1)
2008 Jan 17, The NYSE agreed to
buy the American Stock Exchange for $260 million in stock.
(SFC, 1/18/08, p.C4)
2008 Jan 17, Merrill Lynch
& Co Inc reported about $16 billion in mortgage-related
write-downs and adjustments in the worst quarter of the company's
history.
(AP, 1/18/08)
2008 Jan 17, Investigators
probing the source of a listeria outbreak said the strain that
killed three people was found at a dairy processing plant in central
Massachusetts.
(AP, 1/17/08)
2008 Jan 17, Scientists at
Stemagen, a California company, reported that they have created the
first mature cloned human embryos from single skin cells taken from
adults.
(SFC, 1/18/08, p.A18)
2008 Jan 17, Australia said it
would send a ship to pick up two anti-whaling activists who jumped
on a Japanese harpoon vessel from a rubber boat in Antarctic waters,
offering a solution to a tense, two-day standoff on the high seas.
(AP, 1/17/08)
2008 Jan 17, Britain accused
Russia of "conduct not worthy of a great country" after what it
called a campaign of intimidation by security services forced its
cultural centers in two Russian cities to halt operations.
(AP, 1/17/08)
2008 Jan 17, A British Airways
jet from Beijing carrying 152 people crash-landed, injuring 19
people and causing more than 200 flights to be canceled at Europe's
busiest airport.
(AP, 1/17/08)
2008 Jan 17, In Burkina Faso
leaders of half a dozen African countries agreed on Ivory Coast's
Philippe-Henri Tacoury-Tabley as the new head of the central bank of
the eight-nation West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA).
(AFP, 1/17/08)
2008 Jan 17, In southwestern
Colombia the Galeras volcano erupted violently, spewing ash miles
into the sky and prompting the evacuation of several thousand people
living nearby.
(AP, 1/18/08)
2008 Jan 17, Members of the
European Parliament adopted a resolution criticizing Egypt's human
rights record, even after Cairo summoned EU ambassadors to complain
about the text.
(AFP, 1/17/08)
2008 Jan 17, In Germany
officials said a troubled teen (16) is spending nine months in
remote Siberia as part of efforts to turn him away from violence.
"If he doesn't hack wood, his place is cold. If he doesn't get
water, he can't wash."
(AP, 1/17/08)
2008 Jan 17, Bobby Fischer
(b.1943), the reclusive chess genius, died in Iceland. He became a
Cold War hero by dethroning the Soviet world champion in 1972 and
later renounced his American citizenship.
(AP, 1/18/08)
2008 Jan 17, In Iraq a suicide
bomber blew himself up inside a Shiite mosque on the outskirts of
Baqouba, killing at least 11 and wounded 15.
(AP, 1/18/08)
2008 Jan 17, An Israeli court
sentenced a major in Israel's army reserves to five years in prison
for offering secret information to Iran and the Islamic militant
group Hamas. David Shamir (45), a psychiatrist, was convicted of
contact with a foreign agent and possession of information with the
intent of endangering state security. He never managed to deliver
any secret information.
(AP, 1/17/08)
2008 Jan 17, Rains battered
portions of flood-ravaged southern Africa, killing at least three
people in Malawi and forcing Zambia to declare a national disaster.
(AP, 1/17/08)
2008 Jan 17, In Mexico
officials found six bodies inside a Tijuana house where gunmen took
refuge during a shootout with soldiers and police.
(AP, 1/17/08)
2008 Jan 17, Militants in
Hamas-ruled Gaza bombarded southern Israel with rockets and Israel
pounded back with air and ground fire pushing peace efforts to the
sidelines. Israeli rockets killed at least 5 Palestinians including
2 militants and 3 civilians.
(AP, 1/17/08)(SFC, 1/18/08, p.A10)
2008 Jan 17, In New Zealand
Karen Aim (26), a Scottish tourist from the Orkney Islands, was
attacked on her way home after drinking with friends in the town of
Taupo. Police responding to reports of vandalism at a Taupo high
school found her lying in a pool of blood on a street corner. In
March a 14-year-old boy was charged with her slaying.
(AP, 3/18/08)
2008 Jan 17, In Pakistan a
suspected Sunni extremist opened fire in a Shiite mosque, in the
northwestern city of Peshawar, and then blew himself up, killing 9
people and wounding at least 20 on the eve of the Ashoura religious
festival. Helicopter gunships opened fire on two suspect cars near a
third fort in South Waziristan, killing eight militants. A teenager
(15) who said he was part of a team of assassins sent to kill former
PM Benazir Bhutto was arrested near the Afghan border. The teen was
also involved in a plot to attack Shiites during an Ashoura
festival.
(AP, 1/17/08)(AFP, 1/18/08)(AP, 1/19/08)
2008 Jan 17, In Somalia Islamic
militants fired mortar shells and guns in Mogadishu sparking
crossfire with Ethiopian troops that left at least 20 people dead.
(SFC, 1/18/08, p.A4)
2008 Jan 17, Sri Lanka's
military said air force jets destroyed a hideout used by senior
Tiger rebels. The pro-rebel TamilNet Web site said the jets had
struck a civilian area and seven people had been wounded. Suspected
Tamil Tiger rebels fatally shot 10 ethnic Sinhalese civilians in
southern Thanamalwila village. A pro-rebel Web site said those
killed were civilians carrying guns provided by the government after
an attack on a farm in the same area that killed 32 people this
week.
(AP, 1/17/08)(AP, 1/18/08)

2009 Jan 17, President-elect
Barack Obama rolled into the capital city after pledging to help
bring the nation "a new Declaration of Independence" and promising
to rise to the stern challenges of the times. He kicked off a
four-day inaugural celebration with a daylong rail trip, retracing
the path Abraham Lincoln took in 1861.
(AP, 1/18/09)
2009 Jan 17, The US Department
of Defense announced that it transferred six detainees out of
Guantanamo, leaving about 245 at the offshore prison. Four detainees
were sent to Iraq, one to Algeria and one to Afghanistan. Since
2002, more than 525 detainees have departed Guantanamo. Haji
Bismullah (29) of Afghanistan had always insisted that he was no
terrorist.
(AP, 1/18/09)(SFC, 1/19/09, p.A4)
2009 Jan 17, A US researcher
who visited the North said North Korea has hardened its stance on
disarmament, saying it has "weaponized" plutonium into warheads, but
hopes for better ties with President-elect Barack Obama.
(AP, 1/17/09)
2009 Jan 17, Susanna Foster
(84), film star, died. Her dozen films included "The Phantom of the
Opera" (1943).
(SFC, 1/21/09, p.B6)
2009 Jan 17, In Afghanistan a
suicide bomb hit outside the German embassy in Kabul, killing four
civilians and wounding dozens of people including a US soldier who
later died of his injuries.
(AFP, 1/17/09)
2009 Jan 17, PM Gordon Brown
told British banks they must own up to the extent of their bad
assets amid more reports his government could launch a fresh bailout
of the struggling sector.
(AP, 1/17/09)
2009 Jan 17, Edmund de
Rothschild (93), former chairman of N.M. Rothschild and Sons
merchant bank and a noted horticulturist, died at his home in
England.
(AP, 1/21/09)
2009 Jan 17, A human rights
groups said Ugandan rebels in eastern Congo have ruthlessly killed
at least 620 people in the past month, and vulnerable civilians in
the region desperately need protection. According to Ugandan troops,
the Lord's Resistance Army rebels set fire to a church in the
village of Tora. it was unclear how many people were killed.
(AP, 1/18/09)(AP, 1/19/09)
2009 Jan 17, A helicopter
carrying 10 French soldiers crashed off the coast of Gabon in
central Africa. At least 2 survived and 2 were killed as rescuers
searched for 6 missing.
(AP, 1/17/09)
2009 Jan 17, Iran's state news
IRNA reported that four Iranians have been convicted and sentenced
to prison in an alleged US-backed plot to topple the government.
(AP, 1/17/09)
2009 Jan 17, Israel bombarded
dozens of Hamas targets hours before a government vote on an
Egyptian brokered cease-fire, prompting Egypt to demand an immediate
halt to the 3-week-old Gaza offensive.
(AP, 1/17/09)
2009 Jan 17, Malaysia's
opposition snatched a parliamentary seat from the beleaguered
coalition government, in a by-election seen as a test of the
nation's political mood.
(AFP, 1/17/09)
2009 Jan 17, In Tijuana,
Mexico, a prostitute (19) was smothered to death. 2 US sailors,
petty officers Jarrett Monzingo and Joshua Dockery, were taken into
custody and faced murder and attempted-murder charges while being
held at La Mesa Prison.
(AP, 2/12/09)
2009 Jan 17, Two dehydrated men
from Myanmar were found bobbing in an ice box in the Torres Strait
off Australia. They told authorities they had spent 25 days adrift
after their fishing boat sank. There was no sign of 18 other crew
members.
(AP, 1/20/09)
2009 Jan 17, Pakistani security
forces, backed by artillery and tanks, killed 14 Taliban insurgents
in heavy fighting in the Mohmand region on the Afghan border.
(Reuters, 1/18/09)
2009 Jan 17, Russia and Ukraine
held gas crisis talks in Moscow that the European Union said were
the "last and best chance" to resolve the row that has left Europe
struggling without key gas supplies.
(AFP, 1/17/09)
2009 Jan 17, Sri Lanka’s
Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka said troops have almost completely
cornered the Tamil Tigers in their northeastern jungle base and that
the rebels' elusive supremo may already have fled the island.
(AFP, 1/18/09)
2009 Jan 17, Near Yemen
hundreds of people were missing and feared dead after three boats
carrying about 400 migrants from Somalia capsized.
(AP, 1/18/09)

2010 Jan 17, In Hoover,
Alabama, a fire at a Days Inn motel killed 4 college students from
Mississippi Univ. for Women in Columbus, Miss.
(SFC, 1/18/10, p.A6)
2010 Jan 17, Arizona made $735
million by selling more than a dozen state buildings, including the
state's Capitol.
(http://tinyurl.com/yjd8vjr)
2010 Jan 17, In Texas 5 people
were gunned down in a small home in Bellville. A man (20) who lived
with them was arrested after trying to break into a nearby house.
(SFC, 1/19/10, p.A6)
2010 Jan 17, Glen Bell Jr.
(86), founder of the Taco Bell fast food chain (1962), died at his
home in Rancho Santa Fe, Ca.
(SFC, 1/19/10, p.C4)
2010 Jan 17, Erich Segal
(b.1937), former Yale professor and author of “Love Story" (1970),
died at his home in London.
(SFC, 1/20/10, p.C7)
2010 Jan 17, In Burkina Faso
Capt. Moussa "Dadis" Camara, Guinea's exiled leader, appealed for
tolerance and reconciliation after he agreed to resign and remain in
exile following a tumultuous one-year rule that culminated in a
December assassination attempt.
(AP, 1/17/10)
2010 Jan 17, Chile held
presidential elections. Sebastian Pinera won the election by a
52-48%margin over former President Eduardo Frei. His election
victory ended two decades of uninterrupted rule by a center-left
coalition, and returned to power the same political parties that
provided civic support for Augusto Pinochet's brutal 1973-1990
dictatorship.
(AP, 1/17/10)(AP, 1/18/10)
2010 Jan 17, In China text
messaging services restarted with some restrictions for cell phone
users in far western China, more than six months after deadly ethnic
rioting prompted the government to shut them down.
(AP, 1/17/10)
2010 Jan 17, UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon flew to Haiti to support earthquake
relief efforts and to visit his staff's devastated headquarters in
what the agency is calling the most challenging disaster it has ever
faced.
(AP, 1/17/10)
2010 Jan 17, In India Jyoti
Basu (95), communist leader of West Bengal’s opposition and the
state’s chief minister for 23 years, died.
(Econ, 1/23/10, p.82)
2010 Jan 17, In Iran lawyer
Hooshang Pour-Babai said senior reformist and former MP Mohsen Safai
Farahani (61), detained since June 20, has been sentenced to six
years in jail. He was accused of "acting against national security,
propaganda against the system, insulting officials and spreading
lies."
(AFP, 1/17/10)
2010 Jan 17, In Iraq Saddam
Hussein's notorious cousin "Chemical Ali" was convicted and
sentenced to death by hanging for ordering the gassing of Kurds in
1988, killing more than 5,000 in an air raid thought to be the worst
single attack of its kind on civilians.
(AP, 1/17/10)
2010 Jan 17, Israel's Defence
Minister Ehud Barak began a one-day visit to Turkey. Israel and
Turkey said they had smoothed over differences following a
diplomatic spat and were working to develop relations and further
military projects.
(AFP, 1/17/10)(AP, 1/17/10)
2010 Jan 17, In Mexico a
severed human head and a flower were found in front of the tomb of
deceased Mexican drug lord Arturo Beltran Leyva. Police found the
bodies of five men scattered around the Michoacan state capital of
Morelia, each bearing a handwritten note suggesting they were killed
by vigilantes.
(AP, 1/18/10)(AP, 1/17/10)
2010 Jan 17, In Nigeria clashes
took place in the central city of Jos as tensions reignited between
Muslims and Christian gangs, a year after similar fighting killed
hundreds of its residents. Angry Muslim youths set a Catholic church
filled with worshippers ablaze, starting a riot that killed at least
27 people and wounded more than 300 others.
(Reuters, 1/17/10)(AP, 1/18/10)
2010 Jan 17, At least one
suspected US drone fired on a house in Pakistan's volatile tribal
region, killing 20 people in the 11th such attack since militants in
the area orchestrated a deadly suicide bombing against the CIA in
Afghanistan. The house targeted was being used by Usman Jan, the
head of the al-Qaida-linked Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Five
Uzbeks were killed in the strike. The other 15 people killed were
Pakistani Taliban. Two anti-Taliban tribal elders were killed in
separate attacks in the Bajur tribal.
(AP, 1/17/10)
2010 Jan 17, Ukrainians voted
in presidential elections. Voters in the first round gave opposition
leader Viktor Yanukovich, the 2004 Orange Revolution's chief target,
a big lead over his rival, Orange heroine and PM Yulia Tymoshenko.
Analysts said Yanukovich's 35.4% to 25% lead over Tymoshenko, with
97.7% of votes counted, is misleading, because she is likely to pick
up most of the votes of 16 also-rans in a Feb 7 runoff. Almost 67%
of eligible voters cast ballots.
(Reuters, 1/17/10)(AP, 1/18/10)

2011 Jan 17, Alabama Gov.
Robert Bentley was inaugurated. After the official inaugural
ceremony he said "Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus
Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and
you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother."
(AP, 1/18/11)\
2011 Jan 17, Don Kirshner
(b.1934), veteran music mogul, died in Boca Raton, Fla. His TV show
“Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert" ran from 1973-1982.
(SFC, 1/19/11, p.A8)
2011 Jan 17, John Ross
(b.1938), US poet, author, journalist and political activist who
lived in Mexico and wrote extensively on its leftist political
movements, died of liver cancer. His books included "Rebellion from
the Roots: Zapatista Uprising in Chiapas."
(AP, 1/18/11)(SFC, 1/19/11, p.C5)
2011 Jan 17, Brazil's army on
sent 700 soldiers to help throw a lifeline to desperate
neighborhoods that have been cut off from food, water or help in
recovering bodies since mudslides killed at least 700 people.
(AP, 1/17/11)(Reuters, 1/17/11)(AP, 1/18/11)
2011 Jan 17, British drugs firm
GlaxoSmithKline said it expects to be hit by a total legal charge of
£2.2 billion linked to its former blockbuster diabetes product
Avandia, sparking a sharp drop in its shares.
(AFP, 1/17/11)
2011 Jan 17, Canada-based
Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM), the maker of BlackBerry, promised
Indonesia it will meet the country's request to filter out
pornographic content on its smartphones in the next four days.
(AP, 1/17/11)
2011 Jan 17, China’s state
media said thousands of villagers angry at government plans to build
an artificial island in southern China forced the project's
suspension last week, clashing with workers and smashing vehicles.
(Reuters, 1/17/11)
2011 Jan 17, Two men set
themselves on fire in Egypt and Mauritania, raising to three the
number of self-immolation attempts apparently influenced by a
similar action in Tunisia that helped trigger a popular uprising. In
Cairo Abdou Abdel-Monaam Hamadah (48) was taken to the hospital with
light burns. In Nouakchott Yacoub Ould Dahoud (43) torched himself
in his car and was rushed to a hospital.
(AP, 1/17/11)
2011 Jan 17, Iranian officials
confirmed that the stoning to death sentence against Sakineh
Mohammadi Ashtiani (43) has been suspended. She still faced a prison
sentence for acting as an accessory to the murder of her husband.
(SFC, 1/18/11, p.A2)
2011 Jan 17, The governor of
Iraq's western Anbar province survived at least a fourth
assassination attempt in just over a year, escaping unharmed a
suicide attack that left six people wounded in Ramadi. Tamim
provincial Gov. Abdul-Rahman Mustafa said an electricity dispute
with the central government has spurred him to cut the power supply
to Baghdad emanating from his oil-rich region. A US soldier died in
an incident in northern Iraq unrelated to combat.
(AP, 1/17/11)
2011 Jan 17, Israeli Defense
Minister Ehud Barak abruptly announced that he was leaving the Labor
Party, dividing the movement that has dominated Israeli politics for
decades and setting off a chain reaction that cast new doubts over
troubled peace efforts with the Palestinians.
(AP, 1/17/11)
2011 Jan 17, Japanese
researchers said they will launch a project this year to resurrect
the long-extinct mammoth by using cloning technology to bring the
ancient pachyderm back to life in around five years time.
(AP, 1/17/11)
2011 Jan 17, Kuwait’s state
news reported that ruling Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah is marking
several key anniversaries by handing out $3559 grants and free food
coupons for every citizen.
(SFC, 1/18/11, p.A2)
2011 Jan 17, In Lebanon a
long-awaited indictment was released in the death of former Prime
Minister Rafik Hariri. The indictment was sealed and its contents
will likely not become public for weeks. But the court is widely
expected to accuse members of Hezbollah of being involved in the
killing, something the Shiite militant group has insisted it will
not accept.
(AP, 1/18/11)
2011 Jan 17, In Mexico 14
inmates broke out from a jail after escaping through a hole in a
wall in the northern border state of Chihuahua. A vehicle charged
the metal gate of the Aquiles Serdan Social Rehabilitation Center to
pick up the prisoners. 5 were caught, along with three suspected
accomplices, following air and ground searches by police. Police
said 8 people have died in a shootout among drug dealers in a poor
suburb of Mexico City.
(AFP, 1/17/11)(SFC, 1/18/11, p.A2)
2011 Jan 17, Mozambique
officially received its new $70-million (€53-million) national
sports stadium from the Chinese government after a series of false
starts delayed its completion.
(AFP, 1/17/11)
2011 Jan 17, In
northwestern Pakistan a bomb ripped apart a minibus, killing all 17
people on board and two others in a nearby vehicle.
(AP, 1/17/11)
2011 Jan 17, In Somalia mortars
fired at the Somali parliament missed the building but killed four
civilians in Mogadishu. A village elder said eight people died of
hunger-related illnesses in the southern village of Torotorow and
the surrounding areas.
(AP, 1/17/11)
2011 Jan 17, South Africa's
Cooperative Governance Ministry said at least 40 people have been
killed or gone missing following heavy rains from late December
through most of January and that thousands of homes in neighboring
Mozambique have been destroyed.
(Reuters, 1/17/11)
2011 Jan 17, Angry Swiss
lawmakers called for the ouster of US diplomats suspected of
illegally spying on people around their diplomatic missions, in a
standoff over the use of counterterrorism measures.
(AP, 1/17/11)
2011 Jan 17, WikiLeaks founder
Julian Assange vowed to publish secret details of offshore accounts
after Rudolf Elmer, a Swiss banking whistleblower, handed over data
on 2,000 purportedly tax-dodging individuals and firms.
(AFP, 1/17/11)(SSFC, 1/23/11, p.A5)
2011 Jan 17, Tunisia's PM
Mohamed Ghannouchi announced a national unity government, hoping to
quell simmering unrest following the ouster of President Zine El
Abidine Ben Ali amid huge street protests.
(AP, 1/17/11)

2012 Jan 17, In Wisconsin
opponents of Gov. Scott Walker submitted 1 million signatures for
his recall, far exceeding the 540,208 needed.
(SFC, 1/18/12, p.A7)
2012 Jan 17, Rotary
Int’l. announced it had raised another $200 million to eradicate
polio. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will contribute a
further $504 million. One of three active strains was eliminated in
1999.
(Econ, 1/21/12, p.90)
2012 Jan 17, Afghan President
Hamid Karzai urged the Taliban to allow teams conducting a polio
vaccination campaign to reach areas under the insurgents' control.
Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria are the last three nations
where polio remains endemic.
(AP, 1/17/12)
2012 Jan 17, In Afghanistan
assailants gunned down Mohammad Nahim Agha Mama, a prominent
anti-Taliban tribal leader as he was praying in a mosque in
Kandahar. A suicide car bomber slammed into the entrance of a
military base jointly run by NATO and Afghan troops in Nangarhar
province, wounding three Afghan private security guards. NATO forces
reportedly killed 5 civilians, including a woman and 2 children,
during an overnight raid in Kunar province.
(AP, 1/17/12)(AP, 1/18/12)
2012 Jan 17, Grant Korgan (33),
of Incline Village, arrived at the South Pole on the 100-year
anniversary of the Terra Nova Expedition. Korgan, paralyzed in a
2010 snowmobiling accident, used a device called a Sitski to get
there. The expedition party included paralympian John Davis, two
guides and cinematographers who were shooting for a documentary
called "The Push: A South Pole Adventure." The film is expected to
be released later this year.
(AP, 1/18/12)
2012 Jan 17, Britain announced
defense cuts. Around 400 of Nepalese Gurkha fighters will lose their
jobs as part of the cuts, which will see more than 4,000 posts
slashed from the armed forces in total.
(AFP, 1/17/12)
2012 Jan 17, Britain said it
has signed deals with China to research stem cells and smart grids,
after Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne held 2-day talks
with officials in Beijing aimed at attracting investment.
(AFP, 1/17/12)
2012 Jan 17, In China around
1,000 people from Wanggang village gathered in front of a government
building in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong, in protest against Li
Zhihang, their allegedly corrupt Communist Party secretary. The next
morning officials said they would probe their case and would
announce the result of the investigation by February 19.
(AFP, 1/19/12)
2012 Jan 17, In China Zhu Yufu
(58), a writer and democracy advocate, was charged with subversion
in Hangzhou for writing a poem urging citizens to gather to defend
their freedoms. In February Yufu was sentenced to 7 years in prison.
(SFC, 1/18/12, p.A3)(SFC, 2/11/12, p.A2)
2012 Jan 17, In Cuba a decaying
residential building collapsed in a densely packed area of Havana,
killing three people and injuring six.
(AP, 1/18/12)
2012 Jan 17, Gunmen in
Ethiopia's arid north attacked a group of European tourists
traveling in one of the world's lowest and hottest regions, killing
five, wounding two and kidnapping two. The attack was blamed on
groups trained and armed by the Eritrean government. Two Germans
held hostage were released on March 5.
(AP, 1/18/12)(AFP, 3/6/12)
2012 Jan 17, The European Union
and Hungary brought their fight over democratic rights fully into
the open, with the EU Commission launching legal challenges against
the former Soviet-bloc country many fear may be slipping back into
authoritarianism.
(AP, 1/17/12)
2012 Jan 17, The European Court
of Human Rights blocked Britain from extraditing Abu Qatada (aka
Omar Mohammed Othman), an alleged top aide of Osama bin Laden to
Jordan, saying evidence against him may have been obtained through
torture.
(AFP, 1/17/12)
2012 Jan 17, Gambia's High
Court sentenced Amadou Janneh, the former information minister, to
life imprisonment for conspiring to overthrow the ruler of 17 years
with T-shirts demanding an end to dictatorship.
(AP, 1/17/12)
2012 Jan 17, In Guinea at least
one person was killed and some 30 were injured as soldiers fired on
a crowd protesting electricity cuts in the port city of Kamsar.
(AFP, 1/17/12)
2012 Jan 17, Honduran lawyer
Ricardo Rosales (42), who had reported torture and human rights
violations by police officers, was killed by 3 gunmen in Tela.
(AP, 1/18/12)
2012 Jan 17, India, the world's
biggest bullion consumer, sharply hiked import duties on gold and
silver in a move that will raise domestic prices of the precious
metals.
(AFP, 1/17/12)
2012 Jan 17, India said it was
continuing to buy oil from Iran, despite an intensifying US campaign
to smother Tehran's vital oil exports until it abandons its nuclear
program.
(AFP, 1/17/12)
2012 Jan 17, The Indian
government dispatched a team of medical experts to the financial
capital, Mumbai, to assess reports of a handful of cases of
apparently untreatable tuberculosis.
(AFP, 1/17/12)
2012 Jan 17, It was reported
that a new online game in India called "Angry Brides," available as
a free application on Facebook, has attracted more than 270,000
fans. It seeks to highlight the problem of illegal dowry demands for
women.
(AFP, 1/17/12)
2012 Jan 17, In western Iraq
insurgents attacked a checkpoint killing five policemen in the Anbar
province town of Rutba.
(AP, 1/17/12)
2012 Jan 17, Madagascar police
fired teargas to disperse a crowd of opposition supporters addressed
by former president Albert Zafy in the capital city.
(AFP, 1/17/12)
2012 Jan 17, In eastern Mali a
new Tuareg rebel group under Col. Mahamed Ag Najim launched its
first attack. Rebel members included former pro-Gadhafi fighters.
Government forces in Menaka counter-attacked and used helicopters to
bomb rebel positions.
(AP, 1/17/12)(Econ, 3/17/12, p.60)
2012 Jan 17, Nigerian soldiers
arrested six Islamists described as high-ranking members of the Boko
Haram sect during a raid in Maiduguri. Troops shot dead four
suspected members of the sect and injured five others in the same
city and defused five bombs. Boko Haram gunmen shot dead 2 soldiers
who were distributing food to soldiers on duty. Police acknowledged
that Kabiru Sokoto, the suspected mastermind of the Christmas Day
bombing, has escaped custody after being arrested in the country's
capital.
(AP, 1/17/12)(AFP, 1/18/12)(AP, 1/18/12)
2012 Jan 17, In Northern
Ireland British Army experts defused a pipe bomb near a Catholic
elementary school in Belfast. Police said they found the bomb near
the scene of an overnight fire that destroyed a small shop across
the street from the school.
(AP, 1/17/12)
2012 Jan 17, In northwest
Pakistan Mukarram Khan Aatif, a reporter for Voice of America, was
shot dead by masked gunmen in Shabqadar. A day later the Pakistani
Taliban claimed responsibility.
(SFC, 1/19/12, p.A2)
2012 Jan 17, In Syria at least
34 people were killed in several towns and cities across the
country, including 6 soldiers who had defected and 3 members of the
security forces.
(SFC, 1/18/12, p.A2)

2013 Jan 17, All 79 officers
and crew of the USS Guardian were taken off the ship for safety
reasons after it struck the Tubataha Reef, a UNESCO World Heritage
site, with its bow at 2 a.m. in the Philippines. The Navy said
inaccurate data and may have been a factor in the Guardian's
grounding. The last major part of the ship was removed on March 30.
The US faced paying environmental damages of more than $2 million.
(AP, 1/19/13)(SFC, 1/26/13, p.A4)(SFC, 4/1/13,
p.A2)
2013 Jan 17, Chicago
businessman Tahawwur Rana was sentenced to 14 years in prison for
providing material support to overseas terrorism.
(SFC, 1/17/13, p.A10)
2013 Jan 17, Alvin Williams Jr.
(34), a former senator in the US Virgin Islands, pleaded guilty in a
public corruption case.
(SFC, 1/17/13, p.A10)
2013 Jan 17, Pauline Phillips
(b.1918), advice columnist known as “Dear Abby" (Abigail Van Buren),
died in Minneapolis. Her first column appeared in San Francisco
Chronicle on Jan 9, 1956. Her daughter, Jeanne Phillips, began
co-writing the column in 1987 and took over full-time in 2002.
(SFC, 1/17/13, p.A1)
2013 Jan 17, In eastern Algeria
Algerian helicopters strafed the remote Sahara gas plant in the
outpost of Ain Amenas. At least 20 foreign hostages reportedly
escaped from Islamist militants who had taken over the natural gas
complex. Casualty figures varied widely.
(AP, 1/17/13)
2013 Jan 17, British, Norwegian
and Spanish oil companies evacuated workers from Algerian energy
facilities following the hostage-taking by Islamic militants in the
Sahara desert and Algeria's attempt to free them.
(AP, 1/17/13)
2013 Jan 17, A British judge
sentenced Achilleas Kallakis (44), a fake property tycoon, to seven
years in jail for defrauding two banks out of over 700 million
pounds ($1.1 billion), but said Allied Irish Banks and Bank of
Scotland deserved some blame for poor risk controls. Co-defendant
Alexander Williams (44), convicted of the same counts for his role
in producing forged documents to back up Kallakis's applications for
loans, was sentenced to 5 years. In May the jail terms for both men
were extended, 4 more for Kallakis and 3 more for Williams.
(AP, 1/18/13)(Reuters, 5/16/13)
2013 Jan 17, Ethiopian Airlines
grounded its four Boeing 787 Dreamliners following a decision by the
Federal Aviation Administration to take the planes out of service in
the United States because of a risk of fire from its lithium
batteries.
(AP, 1/17/13)
2013 Jan 17, EU foreign
ministers approved sending a military training mission to Mali, to
shore up the Malian army and enable the country's government to
regain control of all its territory.
(AP, 1/17/13)
2013 Jan 17, Authorities in
Ghana arrested Charles Ble Goude, the former leader of an
ultranationalist youth movement in Ivory Coast. He was wanted in
connection with violence linked Ivory Coast’s disputed 2010
presidential elections. Ble Goude was soon charged with war crimes
over his alleged role in violence linked to the and extradicted to
Ivory Coast.
(AP, 1/17/13)(AP, 1/21/13)(Econ, 4/13/13, p.51)
2013 Jan 17, Greek lawmakers
voted to investigate former Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou
over his handling of data on Greeks with Swiss bank accounts.
(SFC, 1/17/13, p.A2)
2013 Jan 17, Indonesia's army
deployed rubber boats in the capital's business district to rescue
people trapped in floods that inundated much of the city of 14
million people. At least 20 people died and some 40,000 were
displaced.
(AP, 1/17/13)(Econ, 1/26/13, p.38)
2013 Jan 17, In Iraq insurgents
unleashed a string of bomb attacks, mainly targeting Shiite Muslim
pilgrims across the country, killing at least 26 people.
(AP, 1/17/13)
2013 Jan 17, Jordan's PM
Abdullah Ensour said Jordan will prevent a mass exodus of Syrian
refugees from entering its territory if President Bashar Assad's
regime collapses, and will instead create a safe haven inside Syria
to protect them.
(AP, 1/17/13)
2013 Jan 17, In Mali fighting
raged in Konna, airstrikes hit Diably and army troops raced to
protect Banamba, on the seventh day of the French-led military
intervention to wrest back Mali's north from al Qaida-linked groups.
(AP, 1/17/13)
2013 Jan 17, The Pakistani
government and Muslim cleric Tahir-ul-Qadri struck a deal to end
four days of protests by thousands in the capital.
(AP, 1/17/13)
2013 Jan 17, Pakistan's
anti-corruption chief refused a Supreme Court order to arrest PM
Raja Pervaiz, citing a lack of evidence in a graft case that sparked
the latest clash between the government and the country's top court.
(AP, 1/17/13)
2013 Jan 17, In Moscow, Russia,
a masked assailant, later identified as Yuri Zarutsky (35), threw
acid on the face of Sergei Filin, artistic director of the Bolshoi
Ballet. Filin suffered 3rd degree burns and underwent eye surgery to
save his sight. On March 6 police said that star dancer Pavel
Dmitrichenko (29) had confessed to masterminding the attack, and two
other men, Zarutsky and Andrei Lipatov, confessed to being
accomplices.
(SFC, 1/19/13, p.A3)(AP, 3/6/13)
2013 Jan 17, South Sudan said
it is withdrawing its troops from a disputed border region with
Sudan so that a demilitarized zone can be established.
(AP, 1/17/13)
2013 Jan 17, The United
Nation-African Union Mission in Darfur said in a report that over
100 deaths and the displacement of 70,000 people resulted from
clashes between the Abbala and Beni Hussein tribes in Jabel Amir,
the site of gold mines in North Darfur state in western Sudan.
(AP, 1/17/13)
2013 Jan 17, In Syria an air
raid killed at least 15 people in the town of Kfar Nabouedeh in the
central province of Hama. Violence continued in different parts of
the country. Clashes in the northern town of Ras al-Ayn least eight
rebels and one Kurdish PYD fighter.
(AP, 1/17/13)
2013 Jan 17, French journalist,
Yves Debay was shot and killed in Aleppo by a regime sniper while
covering clashes between rebels and forces loyal to President Bashar
Assad.
(AP, 1/18/13)
2013 Jan 17, In Thailand
Japanese PM Shinzo Abe and Thai PM Yingluck Shinawatra agreed to
work together to solve bilateral and regional problems.
(SFC, 1/17/13, p.A8)
2013 Jan 17, Zimbabwe’s Vice
President John Nkomo (79) died in Harare. He was one of the
country’s two vice presidents.
(AP, 1/17/13)

2014 Jan 17, President Barack
Obama curtailed the reach of massive US National Security Agency
phone surveillance sweeps, but said bulk data collection must go on
to protect America from terrorists.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, The US Election
Assistance Comission denied requests from Arizona, Georgia and
Kansas to modify the federal registration form for their residents.
It said heightened proof-of-citizenship requirements would likely
hinder eligible citizens from voting in federal elections.
(SSFC, 1/19/14, p.A8)
2014 Jan 17, California Gov.
Jerry Brown formally declared a state-wide drought.
(SFC, 1/17/14, p.D1)
2014 Jan 17, A Pennsylvania
judge struck down a state requirement that voters show photo
identification at the polls.
(SFC, 1/18/14, p.A6)
2014 Jan 17, In Pennsylvania a
school shooting wounded two students at the Delaware Valley Charter
High School. Raisheem Rochwell (17) was charged the next day as an
adult.
(SSFC, 1/19/14, p.A8)
2014 Jan 17, In West Virginia
Freedom Industries, the company blamed for the Jan 9 chemical spill
that left 300,000 people in the state without safe drinking water,
field for bankruptcy.
(SFC, 1/18/14, p.A4)
2014 Jan 17, In Afghanistan a
Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up near a Lebanese restaurant
frequented by foreigners in Kabul and bursts of intense gunfire
ensued. The assault against La Taverna du Liban included 18
foreigners and 8 Afghans, all civilians.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)(AP, 1/18/14)(Econ, 11/29/14,
p.35)
2014 Jan 17, Austria's
government agreed to raise the wages of its 200,000 civil servants
by 1.9 percent this year after big protests against the new
government.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, Brazilian
authorities said the death toll in last weekend's flash flooding in
the southern town of Itaoca has risen to 17, with nine people still
missing.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Central African
Republic attackers ambushed Muslims fleeing sectarian violence
outside the town of Bouar killing 22 people.
(SFC, 1/20/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 17, Chechen strongman
Ramzan Kadyrov said rebel leader Doku Umarov, who vowed to disrupt
the Sochi Winter Olympics, is dead. Russian security services did
not confirm the claim.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, China began to
implement the loosening of its controversial one-child policy as
Zhejiang province announced it has made it legal for couples to have
two children if one parent is an only child.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, China called on
the Philippines to meet it halfway on new Chinese fishing rules in
the disputed South China Sea, adding that Beijing was always willing
to make efforts to resolve such issues via talks.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, China announced 4
more cases of H7N9 bird flu.
(SFC, 1/18/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 17, Czech President
Milos Zeman appointed center-left leader Bohuslav Sobotka prime
minister, opening the way for the former finance minister to pursue
looser fiscal policies and closer links with the core of Europe.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, CongoDRC forces
attacked Ugandan Islamist rebels in the lawless east, launching a
UN-backed offensive to clear insurgents from the mineral-rich zone.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Egypt at least
4 people was killed in clashes between police and Islamists, as the
country awaited results of a constitutional referendum billed as an
endorsement of president Mohamed Morsi's overthrow.
(AFP, 1/17/14)(AP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Haiti a judge
concluded the investigation into one of the country’s most notorious
political assassinations, accusing nine people of having a hand in
the 2000 killing of radio journalist Jean Dominique, including
several close associates of former Pres. Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
(Reuters, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 17, In India Sunanda
Pushka, the wife of government minister Shashi Tharoor, was found
dead in a New Delhi hotel room having earlier accused her husband of
adultery. Her death was described as "sudden" and "unnatural"
following an autopsy. In 2015 a medical board concluded that she had
been poisoned.
(Reuters, 1/18/14)(AP, 1/7/15)
2014 Jan 17, In India Syedna
Mohammed Burhanuddin (102), the head of the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim
community, died in Mumbai.
(AP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 17, Indonesia said
that it would increase naval patrols after territorial violations by
Australia as it tried to turn back asylum seekers. The Australian
government apologised unreservedly to Jakarta after its navy
"inadvertently" violated Indonesian waters during border security
operations.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, The Israeli army
fired live rounds and tear gas at protesters near the border fence
in the Gaza Strip, wounding two Palestinians. Troops fired at some
300 demonstrators who were protesting against Israel's destruction
of farmland for its 300-meter buffer zone.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Lebanon rocket
fire into the border town of Arsal killed at 8 people, including 5
children. At least 20 rockets launched from Syria struck Lebanese
frontier areas.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, Madagascar
declared Hery Rajaonarimampianina (55), a Canadian-educated former
finance minister backed by strongman Andry Rajoelina, as the
country's new president.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, Mali's army
arrested Houka Houka Ag Alfousseyni, a hardline Islamist judge. He
had ordered floggings, amputations and the stoning of women for
adultery during a 10-month occupation by rebels linked to al Qaeda.
(Reuters, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Pakistan a bomb
exploded on a train as it was en route from Peshawar to Karachi. 3
passengers were killed and 15 wounded. Taliban gunmen killed 3 men
working for a private TV station in Karachi.
(AP, 1/17/14)(Reuters, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, In the Philippines
thousands of people fled rising floods and an approaching storm in a
fresh round of evacuations as the death toll from a week of foul
weather rose to 37.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Romania a
British diplomat (46) plummeted from the highest floor of a hotel in
the northern city of Baia Mare after leaving a farewell note.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, It was reported
that Sochi residents are blaming the Olympic Games for ecological
damage. Environmental experts said that Russia’s Olympic
construction, which has consisted of pouring soil into lowland
swamps, helped cause the flooding that created a state of emergency
in the area in September and could increase the risk for more
flooding.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, Sources said that
Russia in recent weeks has stepped up supplies of military gear to
Syria, including armored vehicles, drones and guided bombs, boosting
President Bashar al-Assad just as rebel infighting has weakened the
insurgency against him.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Scotland the
body of a missing Edinburgh youngster was found in Fife shortly
before midnight. The mother of Mikaeel Kular (3) was detained
following the discovery. The boy was last seen on Jan 15.
(AFP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 17, In northern Sri
Lanka the discovery of a mass grave containing more than 30 skulls
fuelled speculation that there may be many more like it containing
the remains of thousands who went missing during the island nation's
nearly three-decade war. Residents of Mannar said that the area was
controlled mainly by the army from 1990.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, The Sudan People's
Liberation Army-North reportedly "managed to destroy" a government
convoy at Malkan, Blue Nile state. They claimed to have killed
dozens of soldiers and disabled a tank during battle, but the
military said it was the victor.
(AFP, 1/19/14)
2014 Jan 17, Syria's foreign
minister said his country is prepared to implement a cease-fire in
the war-torn city of Aleppo and exchange detainees with the
country's opposition forces as a confidence building measure ahead
of a peace conference opening next week in Switzerland.
(AP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, Syrian rebels
ousted al Qaeda-linked faction ISIL, from Saraqeb, one of its
northwestern bastions.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, Taiwan lifted a
ban on imports of Canadian beef-on-the-bone as part of its efforts
to promote investment talks with the country and its participation
in regional trade blocs. The new measure will take effect in
mid-February.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Tanzania one
person was killed in clashes between police and thousands of
villagers who stormed a gold mine operated by a subsidiary of
Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Thailand 35
people were wounded in Bangkok when a grenade blast ripped through a
crowd of marching anti-government demonstrators. One person was
killed.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)(Reuters, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 17, Turkish
authorities seized the assets of the main opposition candidate for
the post of Istanbul mayor in the run-up to local polls in March.
Turkey's Savings Deposit Insurance Fund announced the decision after
Mustafa Sarigul and nine other people failed to repay a loan worth
$3.5 million (2.6 million euros) dating back to 1998.
(AFP, 1/18/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Uganda a
spokesman for Pres. Yoweri Museveni said the president has refused
to approve a controversial bill that would have seen homosexuals
jailed for life despite viewing gays as "sick" and "abnormal." In a
letter to parliament, the president had suggested homosexuality was
caused by a genetic flaw, or a need to make money.
(AFP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, Ukraine President
Viktor Yanukovych signed legislation curbing anti-government
protests, civic activism and free speech.
(AFP, 1/17/14)(SFC, 1/20/14, p.A3)
2014 Jan 17, It was reported
that Pope Benedict XVI defrocked 384 priests from 2011-2012 for
sexually molesting children. This was a dramatic increase over the
171 priests removed in 2008 and 2009, when the Vatican first
provided details on the number of priests defrocked.
(AP, 1/17/14)
2014 Jan 17, In Yemen clashes
between armed militants and the army killed three militants in the
southern city of al-Dalea (Daleh). 2 soldiers were killed in the
fighting.
(Reuters, 1/17/14)(AFP, 1/17/14)